On the road again

[Pix to follow - I left the digital card reader at home. I hope these words do justice to the stunning beauty of the scenery described.]

Just eleven days after landing back in Auckland from the US adventure, I make the next exit through the airport across the Manukau Harbour. No 100ml liquids limit or twelve hour flights or connections this time – just one hour south to the capital, which is known, with affection, as 'wet windy Wellington.' Yesterday it was 'gray fog bound Wellington,' a title usually reserved for Hamilton, and the airport was closed until 1pm. I have picked the right day to travel. Its bathed in glorious sunshine and not a cloud in the sky today, even if there is a discernible nip in the air. Cold that brings tears to the eyes by evening. A perfect day for flying though - the North Island is a tapestry of ruffled green hills edged by sweeping curves of black sand beaches that stretch all the way down, out and along the contours of the west coast except where it breaks for a natural harbour.

Ruapehu and Ngaruhoe expose their snow tipped cones to the sun. What could, from a distance, create the illusion of volcanic ash and lava spilling out from the topmost crater, is revealed from another angle to be storm clouds gathering far away to the east. The slow left hand turn over Farewell Spit – the long, golden sand finger pointing north from the top of the south island - carries us back over the Cook Straight. The sea so often in turmoil and shades of moody gray is flatter, deep blue, flecked with tiny white horses. It could be summer.

The approach is smooth, the famous 'Wellington wobble' where the pilot fights to level the wings of a 737 sized jet at twenty feet up then drops it straight onto the runway before it gets blown off balance is in abeyance. The often told tongue in cheek tale is that landing here is the final exam for Air New Zealand trainee pilots. I've landed here in winds gusting to 100kph to spontaneous applause from the passengers.

The Samoan taxi driver who takes me to the city is more friendly than his Auckland counterpart who talked little and awkwardly, then fell silent after I declined his request to stop for gas. I was running late, having tried, and as usual failed, to take the environmentally friendly option of the Airbus that never turns up. I hear glowing reports about the Scots, thanks to the country's famous son, Robert Louis Stevenson, who settled in Samoa in the later years of his life. He wrote many books there, and made the island known to the rest of the world. That knowing still endures, the house he built now occupied by the head of state and his grave up on the hilltop are major tourist attractions.

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me die.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

His legacy is a widely held belief that the Scots are wonderful people I am told. I wonder how a few years in the life and reputation of one fellow countryman could have such lasting impact. I appreciate that this is the legacy of many Scots who traveled the world and left a warm, hospitable welcome for those who come behind them, as well as spawning the future generations who so love to talk about their ancestry and find music in the accent.

The next three days in Wellington are a blur of meetings, workshops, networking, catch up conversations with colleagues from this side and 'across the ditch,' trips uphill to Victoria University in cabs or by cable car and downhill again on foot. Half an hour in Arty Bee's second hand bookshop adds two items to my reasonably lightweight luggage - a 1901 16^th edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Familiar Studies of Men and Books, and Alan Moorehead's No Room in the Ark – a 1959 portrait of the African continent. Then home in time for the weekend.